SCARY JOBS

In the Kansas City Star newspaper, right before Halloween, there was a list of all the scariest jobs that people have to do.  And the way this list was made was that a group called Harris Interactive asked 4,300 people which jobs they thought were the most dangerous and frightening.  So here's the list they came up with, starting with the most scary job of all.

Bomb squad technician

High-rise window washer

Member of the military

Underground miner

Police officer

Alaskan crab fisherman

Mortician

Firefighter

High school teacher

Cemetery worker

Exterminator

Stand-up comedian

Animal control officer

Stunt person

Politician





Well, I thought there should also be a list of scary jobs that dogs do, but I guess the Harris Interactive people didn't think that was important, and that's why they didn't do it.  So I decided to make my own list.  And the way I did it was that I took a scientific survey of my doggy brothers to see which jobs they thought were the scariest, and whenever they didn't agree with me, I just used my own opinion.

I did not ask my kitty siblings and foster siblings to help make the list because even though cats know what "scary" means, they usually do not understand the meaning of "job."

So anyway, here's my list:

1.  Military dogs, especially bomb-sniffing dogs, because they can get blown up or shot dead in a gun battle.

2.  Dogs that have to fight in dogfighting rings, because they can get hurt or killed while fighting.  And if they don't fight very well, they will probably just get killed by their people.

3.  Police dogs, because they have to go after bad guys, and sometimes they get stabbed or shot by the bad guys.

4.  Search-and-rescue dogs, because sometimes they have to search in buildings that might fall down on them.  Also they might have to rescue people out of the water or the snow, both of which are scary places where you could die.

5.  Racing dogs, because they can break their legs, and then they will probably just get shot.  And also they might get shot if they can't run very fast.  Which is why people are all the time trying to rescue retired racing dogs.  Nicky wanted to make this the #1 most scary job.  The rest of us outvoted him, but to keep him happy, so that he'll let me snuggle with him at night, I put in a scary picture of dead greyhounds that sadly didn't get rescued.

6.  Sled dogs, like especially the kind that have to run races, because they can get frozen feet or fall through the ice or get eaten by a polar bear.

7.  Herding dogs, because they can get kicked in the head by cattle or sheep.

8.  Hunting dogs, because they can get all cut up running through the brush, not to mention getting bitten by a raccoon or a fox or a boar or whatever they are hunting.  Or they might have a close encounter with a rattlesnake!  Also, if they are a retrieving type of dog, they might have to go swimming in really cold water just to retrieve a dead duck that they aren't even allowed to eat.

Those are all the doggy jobs I could think of that seem dangerous.  I hope I didn't leave anything out.  It's good that there are dogs who are brave enough to do these jobs, but I think I will just stick to my nice, safe blogging job!

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KITTENS ROCK! by Jacen

Here's the latest news about all of us kittens.  First of all, Mom keeps trying to get rid of me, but I'm not sure why.  For the last two Saturdays, she has taken me to someplace called PetsMart and I had to sit there in a little cage all day.  Lots of people came by and looked at me, but I didn't know who these people were, and I just wanted to go back home.  Finally Mom came and took me home, and then life was happy again!

Hazel and Hallie playing

My three little kitten foster siblings are lots of fun to play with.  A couple of times, Mom let me go in a room with them, and we played a whole bunch.  They can run really fast, even if they are still little and have short legs.  I liked playing with them.  What I liked to do most was hide behind a chair or a plant, and then I suddenly ran out and jumped on one of the kittens.  Except sometimes I just jumped up in the air and didn't even touch the kitten, and then I ran the rest of the way across the room.  This is a really fun game to play, and everyone should play it sometime.

Hallie and I played so fast that it made
the picture blurry!

Mom took pictures of me and the kittens playing, so that's what I'm going to mostly show you.  We are very cute in the pictures because kittens are always cute.  We can't help being cute.  We were just born that way!

Well, after I played with the kittens for a couple of days, Mom saw that they were making diarrhea in their litter box, so on Friday she took them to see Dr. Regan at the shelter.  Dr. Regan said the kittens needed fluids, so she stuck a needle under their skin and squirted stuff in there.  Hallie told me that this hurt a lot and she had some nasty things to say to Dr. Regan about it!

Hamlet acting like a spooky Halloween cat

The kittens also have to have some pink medicine stuff that Mom squirts in their mouths two times a day.  This is to make them feel all better and not have diarrhea.  And until they get well, I'm not allowed to play with them anymore because Mom doesn't want me to get sick.  So now I have to go back to playing with Charlie until I can start playing with the kittens again.

Hazel

When the kittens are bigger, Mom will try to get rid of them, too, just like she is doing with me.  But first they have to weigh 2 pounds so that they can have some special surgery, like I already had.  So far, the kittens only weigh about 11 or 12 ounces, so they are way too little for Mom to get rid of.  This means they are safe for now, and I can still play with them!

Me watching Hamlet and Hallie play

Hallie

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MORE WORDS

DUFFER

A lot of people know that a duffer is a bad golfer, but that's not all it is.  You can be a duffer if you are clumsy and bad at doing almost anything.  Or you can just be incompetent and dull, and that will make you also make you a duffer.

In the beginning, though, a duffer was someone who sold you worthless junk.  A duffer had low morals and would cheat you and trick you into buying something you should know better than to buy.  But then after a while, the word started to refer to the person who was stupid enough to buy the bad things, and not to the person who sold them.

By the late 19th century, a duffer meant somebody who was a bad golfer.  But it also had other meanings, such as being someone who made a stupid mistake or who acts like a complete idiot.  A slang use of duffer is to describe an old person who is driving or walking in a very slow, annoying way.

In Australia, a duffer is a mine or quarry that doesn't produce anything.  Or it can be a person who steals cattle, like what we would call a rustler in the U.S.

QUIDNUNC

This word comes from Latin, and it means "what now."  So a quidnunc is a person who is always wanting to know the latest news and gossip about everybody.  And this person might not be too careful about getting all of their facts correct.  Other words for quidnunc are busybody, buttinsky, meddler, or gossipmonger.  In British slang, another term for a quidnunc is a "nosey parker."

PROSAIC

Most people probably know this word, but Mom told me that she is always forgetting what it means, so she asked me to put it in my blog.  And of course, I like to make Mom happy, so she will keep feeding me, like I've told you before.

Anyway, something that's prosaic is dull and boring and ordinary, and it lacks imagination.   This word started out about 1650-60, and it came from the Latin word prosaicus, which is the same word that prose comes from.  So if something is prosaic, it's kind of matter-of-fact, like prose instead of being romantic and beautiful, like poetry.

Well, I have to say that I think prose can be every bit as beautiful as poetry, especially if it's nicely written, like the prose in my blog, for example.  So I think the word prosaic is kind of unfair and mean, and I'm not sure I'll be using it a whole lot!

HAPPY AS A CLAM

Okay, this is an entire phrase, and not just one word, but I have to admit that I never understood why clams were so darned happy.  In my opinion, it would make more sense to say "happy as a puppy" or "happy as a kitten."  But when I did my research on this phrase, I found out that the whole phrase is "happy as a clam at high tide."

I've never gone out to dig for clams because we don't live anywhere near the ocean, but what I learned on the internet is that you cannot hunt for clams when the tide is high because the water is too deep.  You have to wait for low tide to get your clams.  And so when the tide is high, the clams are supposedly happy because people can't come and dig them out of the sand and eat them.

No one is sure when the clam phrase got started, but people might have been using the original, longer phrase in the middle of the 18th century.  The first record of the shorter phrase in print is in 1830.  I think maybe people like the idea of being all safe and protected inside a shell, like a clam is.  For a dog, it would be kind of like being in a den, but not as good as sleeping with your mom in bed, which is what I did last night, and it made me as happy as a clam!

LOLLYGAG

I put this word in because I think it's fun to say.  As you probably know, it means to mess around and waste time.  One of the earliest recorded uses of the word was in 1868, but back then lollygag meant to flirt and make a public display of affection.  Another spelling of the word is lallygag.  In the Iowa Northern Vindicator of February 27, 1868, there was a complaint about "The lascivious lolly-gagging lumps of licentiousness who disgrace the common decencies of life by their love-sick fawnings at our public dances."  And I would just like to point out that this sentence is prose, but I don't think it's prosaic at all!

An even earlier meaning for lallygag seems to have been something that was nonsense or of no worth.  Here's a poem about a dead cow, published September 14, 1859 in the Wisconsin Sparta Democrat:

22 Kwarts of milck she give,
As true as Eye dew liv,
but now er 12 Kwart bag
Aint wuth a lallygag,
Poor old Thyng!




Well, that's all the new words for today.  I hope you have learned a little something  I know I did!

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HELP! WE'RE OUTNUMBERED!

On Saturday, Mom took Jacen to an adoption event at a Petsmart store, and he had to stay there in a little cage all day so that people could look at him and see how cute he is.  He told me that there were lots of kittens and cats there, and he was scared, so he stayed all sort of huddled up, even though Mom told him to be nice and friendly, so that people would want to adopt him.  But nobody adopted Jacen, so in the end, Mom had to go back and get him and bring him home again.

Hazel and Hamlet

Then after Mom abandoned Jacen at that horrible place, she went to the shelter because it was the annual Pet Reunion.  Last year, Mom took me with her to this fine event, and I got to eat some people food such as cookies and cake.  But this year Mom did not take any dogs there.  She only took some cookies.

Anyway, while Mom was at the shelter, two women came in and brought a box with 3 kittens in it that they had found.  Mom went back into the clinic area to see the kittens, and the clinic director asked Mom if she could take them home and foster them.  Mom looked at the kittens and said, "They're kind of dirty."  But the clinic people said they could give the kittens a bath, and also that the kittens looked healthy.  So Mom agreed to take the kittens home, without even asking us dogs if it was okay to bring a bunch of extra cats into the house, which is something we might not have agreed to.

Hallie

These kittens are only about 4 weeks old, so they are pretty small, but they can meow really big.  Mom put them in Jacen's big crate, which she was only using to feed him in since he runs all over the house all the time anyway.  And now Jacen has to eat in the bathroom downstairs, so that nobody else will steal his yummy-smelling food.

When the kittens came to our house, they were kind of stinky because on the way home, they had diarrhea in their carrier and then they crawled around in it.  Mom said the reason they had diarrhea was probably because they got some de-wormer stuff at the shelter.  Also they got something to kill fleas because they had a bunch of them.

Hazel

So now we have these 3 baby kittens, plus our middle-aged kitten, and 2 adult cats, which adds up to 6 cats in all, and that is a LOT of cats!  Especially when there are only 4 of us dogs.  But Mom made this situation happen, and I can't really do anything about it.

Mom gave the kittens names, and they all start with "H."  The reason she did this was because we were originally supposed to get a little calico kitten on Saturday to foster, but sadly, she died a couple of days before Mom could even bring her home.  The name Mom had picked out for her was Hazel, so Mom decided to go ahead and use that name and find two other "H" names to go with it.  And the names she found were Hallie and Hamlet.

Hamlet

Hallie is a tuxedo kitty, and she is pretty much the alpha cat because she is very bold and has a lot to say and wants a whole bunch of attention.  Hazel looks way different from the other two kittens, so we think maybe she had a different daddy.  She might be part ragdoll or birman or siamese.  Mom doesn't know a whole lot about cat breeds, but she looked at pictures in a book, and that's what she figured out.

Hamlet is the boy kitten, and he is all black.  He is sort of like our poor little Kitten Carson, except that he is not blind, and he doesn't totter around in circles.  But we were a little worried about him at first because he didn't seem as perky as his sisters.  He acted more shy and didn't come out of the kitty bed to eat when Mom put the food there for the kittens.  We think this was because Hallie and Hazel beat up on him, especially Hallie.  I saw Hallie use her little white paw one time to push Hamlet away from the food dish.  But he is getting braver now, and he doesn't pay any attention to his sisters.  He just worms his way in there and eats!

On Tuesday Mom took the kittens back over to the shelter so they could get weighed.  Also Dr. Beth drew some blood out of their tiny veins to find out if the kittens have Feline Leukemia or Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, which it turns out they don't have, and that's a good thing.

Jacen

Jacen likes having the kittens here because he thinks they are really fun playtoys.  Yesterday Mom took the 3 kittens and Jacen in the room that used to be Jacen's playroom, and they all got to play together.  Mom watched them the whole time to make sure Jacen didn't play too hard with the little kittens, and after he jumped on Hallie and she screeched at him, he played very nicely.

Chloe

Anyway, that's enough about kittens.  Now I need to tell you that Tuesday was Chloe's birthday, so she's 7 years old.  Except that none of us remembered it was Chloe's birthday until Wednesday.  And Tuesday while Mom was giving us Supper of Dogs, Chloe jumped up on the counter and ate Nicky's Soloxine pill, which was in a yummy ball of dog food.  So right away, Mom got worried, and she called the vet's office, and they told her to bring Chloe in, so that's what Mom did.  And Dr. Griswald looked at Chloe and tried to get her to puke the pill back up again.  But Chloe wouldn't puke for Dr. Griswald, even though cats are usually very good at puking because they are all the time getting hairballs.

So then Nurse Debbie stuck some charcoal down Chloe's throat because the charcoal is supposed to soak up the medicine that Chloe wasn't supposed to swallow.  After that, Mom brought Chloe back home, and she was fine.  And I think that the reason Chloe ate Nicky's pill is because it was her birthday, and she wanted a special birthday treat and some extra attention, even though nobody remembered it was her birthday.

Well, that's all the news, and mainly I am just worried about cats taking over the whole house, which they could easily do as soon as those kittens get a little bigger.  But I'm not going to worry too much until then because I don't want anything to keep me from getting a good night's sleep!

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A JEWISH CEMETERY

Today is sometimes called All Saints Day, and tomorrow will be The Day of the Dead or All Souls Day, at least in some countries.  None of these are Jewish holidays, but Mom visited a Jewish cemetery on Friday and took a bunch of pictures, and since we're thinking about dead people today and tomorrow, this seemed like a good time to share the photos with you.

The cemetery Mom went to is called Sheffield Cemetery, and it was founded in 1901 by an Orthodox congregation called Tefereth Israel, which means "The Glory of Israel."  Mom had heard of this cemetery, but she had never been there because it's in a part of town where she doesn't usually go.  But on Friday she went to an estate sale that was very close to the cemetery, so that's why she went to see it.

There is no Tefereth Israel synagogue in Kansas City anymore, because over the years, several congregations joined together, and now they are called Beth Israel Abraham and Voliner.  This is a really long name, so usually people just call it B.I.A.V. for short.

This marker is at the front gate of the cemetery, and it shows the names of the men who were involved in founding the cemetery.

On the other side of the gate, there is a marker with the names of the women's committee.  In Orthodox synagogues, the men and women sit in separate areas, but I am not going to explain why because it would take several more blog entries to tell you all about Jewish customs.

In a special place in the middle of the cemetery are the graves of the cemetery founder and his family.

The Sheffield Cemetery website says that there are 5,500 gravesites, and 300 are still available.  The graves are very close together, as you can see in this picture.

Here's one of the oldest stones that Mom saw.  The newest one she saw was dated 2010.

Almost every Jewish tombstone has the Hebrew letters peh and nun.  Mom and I had to do some research to find out why these letters are there, and it turns out they stand for po nikbar or po nitman, which means "here lies."  Mom doesn't know much Hebrew, but she said po means "here" and she thinks nikbar and nitman are two different forms of the verb according to whether it is a man or a woman who is lying here.

Women's markers often have a menorah or other candles, and men's markers may have a star of David.  Each week on the Sabbath, the woman of the household has the duty to light the Sabbath candles, so this is why candles are associated with women.

Other Hebrew lettering on tombstones will be the person's Hebrew name, including who their mother and father were.  Sometimes there's something in Yiddish rather than Hebrew.  And most of the stones have the person's name in English.  Oh, and the Hebrew date when the person died is on the stone so that relatives will always know when to observe the anniversary of the death by saying a special prayer.  Mom thinks the name on this stone might be Reb Israel Zvi, son of Moses, and then the last name might be Geller.  But this is just a guess, since Mom doesn't know much Hebrew, like I said, and she's really not good at reading it if the little vowel symbols aren't there.

Anyway, at the bottom of a lot of the markers there are some letters like this:

And it turns out they stand for a Bible verse, I Samuel 25:29, which says "May his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life."

One interesting custom is that when Jews visit a grave, they leave a small stone to show that they honored the dead person by coming there.  In Sheffield Cemetery, there is a whole birdbath full of stones that people can use for this purpose.  Mom thought this was a great idea because when she went to visit the grave of Aunt Cheryl's dad, which is in another cemetery where only a small part of the cemetery is Jewish, she had to scrounge around to find a stone to put on the gravestone.

If you have ever seen the movie Schindler's List, you saw people going to Mr. Schindler's grave at the end of the movie, and they left stones there.  When Mom was at Sheffield Cemetery, she took a few stones and put them on the graves of children who died back in the 1920s.  She thought that maybe no one is left to visit these graves anymore, which is sad.  And it's also sad that these children died at a very young age.

Here is an interesting foot stone that Mom saw.  Usually these sorts of stones just say "Father" or "Mother," but this one seems more personal and loving.

I liked this marker because the man's name was Wolf, which is an excellent name, and I wish I had known him.

Some other symbols you might see on a Jewish tombstone are a hand pouring water if the person was a Levi, or hands in the form of a priestly blessing if the person was a Cohen.  Also there are symbols for Masons and for Woodmen of the World, which are both fraternal groups, except the Woodmen also have an insurance business.  On their emblem, it says Dum Tacet Clamat, and this is Latin for "Though silent, he speaks."  Which sounds a little spooky to me!

The Woodmen of the World used to give free tombstones to their members, and these tombstones were shaped like tree trunks or logs.  But then in the late 1920s, they stopped doing this because it got to be too expensive.

There is a special, very tall memorial in the cemetery that is dedicated to Jewish soldiers from Kansas City who died in World War II.  On top of the memorial, there is an urn with a cloth over it.  This is a common symbol that you see in cemeteries, and it is supposed to represent immortality, but I'm not sure why.

Besides that, there are just some interesting designs on some of the stones.  I'm only going to show you three of them because this entry is getting way too long already.  Also Mom only took pictures of three of them.  This first one is an Art Nouveau flower design.

And here are some grapes, which maybe represent life.  Plus a lot of Jewish blessings and rituals include wine, so that might be why there would be grapes on a Jewish gravestone.

I like to call this one "extreme grapes"!

Well, okay, that is all I am going to tell you about Sheffield Cemetery.  I wish I could have gone with Mom when she went there because I think it would have been interesting to sniff around.  Mom said there weren't any signs that said "No Dogs Allowed" like there are in a lot of cemeteries nowadays, so I could have gone there and not got thrown out.  But it's too late for that now.  I'm just glad that Mom took some pictures so I could see what this nice place looked like.

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